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For Victoria Braga ’11, a semester in Egypt as an undergraduate gave her a new perspective on the United States — and shaped her future career path. Braga came to Notre Dame with an interest in international relations, but her study abroad experience inspired her to pursue a career as an attorney and a position in the U.S. government. Today, the Arabic and political science major works as a trial attorney in the appellate section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation.

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It started two years ago with a handful of Notre Dame undergraduates and a desire to share their love of music. Today, that passion has resulted in two thriving student groups — the Classical Music Club and the Composers’ Consortium — with more than 200 members.

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The article, “Identifying high-risk young adults for violence prevention: a validation of psychometric and social scales in Honduras,” details the creation of the new Violence-Involved Persons Risk Assessment tool, an aggregate of seven psychometric and social risk assessment tools previously validated in various American and European contexts.

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There are two sides to every story. And for Kraig Beyerlein, there's a side of the story about religious activism that has not been fully told. The associate professor of sociology studies protest movements and has been examining the role of progressive religious activism in the Women's March and along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Four alumni of Notre Dame’s international economics program returned to campus in March to speak to current students about their experience with the major, valuable classes they took, and the skills they developed that are now paying dividends in the real world

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Abigail Ocobock, visiting assistant professor of sociology at Notre Dame, offers the first systemic look at the influence of marriage on the LGBQ community in a new paper published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

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When King Fok was 6 years old, he suffered from an orthopedic condition that caused him to spend two years on crutches. Uncovered by his health insurance, the condition was Fok’s first glimpse into how socioeconomic status impacts health care. That childhood experience informed his decision to major in Arts and Letters pre-health at the University of Notre Dame. As a future physician, he hopes to make medical care more efficient, inclusive, and accessible to all. A sociology class his freshman year helped him discover a perfect major to pair with pre-health.

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Notre Dame research by Dominic Chaloner, Bharat Ranganathan, and Fr. Terrence Ehrman, C.S.C. sought to explore the principles of integral ecology set forth in Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ - "On Care For Our Common Home."

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Caitlin Smith-Oyekole, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in English, and Sevda Arslan, a second-year Ph.D. student in anthropology, have been named 2018 Humanities Without Walls (HWW) pre-doctoral workshop fellows. Supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, HWW is a consortium of 15 Midwestern humanities institutes fostering cross-institutional collaboration in humanities-based research, teaching, and scholarship. 

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Anne García-Romero is associate professor of film, television, and theatre and a faculty fellow in the Institute for Latino Studies. She is a professional playwright as well as a scholar focusing on Latina playwriting.

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As an orthopedic resident at Loyola University Medical Center, Daniel Schmitt ’11 sees a wide variety of patients. Schmitt, who majored in anthropology and biology, relies on his liberal arts education to connect with his diverse patient base and treat them comprehensively at the Level I trauma center — a hospital providing the highest level of surgery to trauma victims.

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The College of Arts and Letters is launching a new, interdisciplinary minor in data science. Housed in the Department of Sociology with support from the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the program will be open to students in any college. “Data science impacts every industry today,” said Sarah Mustillo, professor and chair of sociology. “It is becoming increasingly important for solving problems and making decisions."

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Erika Doss, a Notre Dame professor of American studies, has been named to the first-ever Society of Fellows for the Norman Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies. Established to bring leading thinkers to the study of nearly 200 years of American illustration art, the group hopes to more fully develop the language and discourse of an academic discipline devoted to published art.

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The presence of a prominent female officeholder has a positive effect on the number of women running for lower offices in her state, according to new research by University of Notre Dame political scientist Jeffrey J. Harden. A state with a female governor or U.S. senator will see an increase in the proportion of women seeking state legislative office by about 2 to 3 percentage points, Harden and two co-authors wrote in an article published this month in the American Journal of Political Science.

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When the city of South Bend needed ideas for a new community technology center, it turned to Ann-Marie Conrado’s design research practices class at the University of Notre Dame for help. Part of the collaborative innovation minor in the Department of Art, Art History and Design, the class brings together students from multiple disciplines, from design and engineering to business and anthropology, to solve complex design problems. In this case, the city wanted to create what it called an “inclusive technology resource center” to help residents on the wrong side of the digital divide take advantage of technology for personal and professional growth.

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Laura Dassow Walls is Wllliam P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English. In this video, she discusses her new biography of Henry David Thoreau, his relevance to the current cultural moment, and misconceptions about his life that are re-examined in her book.

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A truly unique production model, First Time Fans brings together Notre Dame alumni filmmakers and pairs them with current students to tell inspiring stories about extraordinary people on an extraordinary campus. A joint venture of the College of Arts and Letters, the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, and the Athletics Department, First Time Fans is a filmmaking co-op where alumni are given the creative canvas to tell a Notre Dame story through the eyes of someone new to campus, using the backdrop of a Fighting Irish athletic event.

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An international economics major with a concentration in French and a supplementary major in peace studies, Brittany Ebeling has been named the 2018 Michel David-Weill Laureate, allowing her to pursue a fully funded two-year master’s degree program at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Studies, or “Sciences Po.” The scholarship is awarded each year to one American who exemplifies the core values of Sciences Po alumnus Michel David-Weill, namely, academic excellence, leadership, multiculturalism, tolerance, and high achievement.

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Evelyn Diaz’s career has taken her to the top of Chicago’s governmental, social service, and nonprofit sectors. And at every stop along the way, Diaz ’92 has relied on skills she cultivated as an English major in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters.

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Pamela Robertson Wojcik is a professor of film, television, and theatre and concurrent faculty in American studies and gender studies. Her research focuses on American film, with particular emphasis on issues of gender, performance, genre, and space.

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Sarah McKibben, an associate professor of Irish language and literature, has won a prestigious fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for her book project, “Tradition Transformed: Bardic Poetry and Patronage in Early Modern Ireland, c. 1560-1660.” McKibben, who is also a faculty fellow in the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, focuses her scholarship on bardic poetry in Ireland during the 16th and 17th centuries. 

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Sarah A. Mustillo, department chair and professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, has been appointed I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters by University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. She succeeds John T. McGreevy, who is stepping down July 1 after serving 10 years as dean. An expert in the social causes of childhood mental illness and statistical methods used in social science research, Mustillo joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2014, after serving seven years as a professor of sociology at Purdue University and six years on the faculty at Duke University School of Medicine. She has served as chair of the Department of Sociology since 2016.

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The College of Arts and Letters is planning renovations in O’Shaughnessy Hall that will open up the café and gallery areas to create a welcoming space with double the current seating of Waddick’s, more natural light, and extensive views onto South Quad. New tables and counter seating will be added, along with couches and comfortable chairs, and multiple outlets for charging phones, computers, and other electronic devices. Unlike at present, the entire space will be open whenever the building is open, morning till night.

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For a team of Notre Dame psychologists, virtual reality is more than a game — it is the next frontier in mental health treatment. Nathan Rose, Jennifer Hames, and Michael Villano are conducting research on the use of virtual reality environments in exposure therapy for participants with a fear of heights. The technology also holds promise for treating phobias like the fear of flying and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Mary Ellen Konieczny, the Henkels Family Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, died Feb. 24 as a result of complications from cancer. She was 58. A faculty fellow of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, she studied religion and conflict, the family and public politics.

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New research from the University of Notre Dame discovers people appear to stop conceiving babies several months before recessions begin. The study, “Is Fertility a Leading Economic Indicator?” was published in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working paper series. It is coauthored by Notre Dame economists Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman, and Steven Lugauer from the University of Kentucky.

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Rev. Daniel G. Groody, C.S.C. is associate professor of theology and global affairs and the director of the Kellogg Global Leadership Program. His research interests include migration and the US-Mexican border, international migration, and refugees.

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Twenty-nine University of Notre Dame students and alumni were awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants during the 2017-18 academic year, placing Notre Dame second among all research institutions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Of the 29 students to receive Fulbrights last year, 22 were Arts and Letters students — which would place the College eighth in the nation among all doctoral institutions. Arts and Letters alone produced more Fulbright winners than the University of California at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Cornell University, and Johns Hopkins.

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Michael Feijoo loves finding ways his everyday life relates to big-picture questions. That’s one of the many reasons the junior finds value in majoring in theology and Arts and Letters pre-health. His combination of academic passions also brought him twice to Ecuador, where served with Timmy Global Health, a nonprofit organization that provides sustainable medical care to South American countries. 

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Six new faculty have joined the Department of Economics this year, bringing expertise in a wide variety of subfields and significant experience conducting research at the federal level. The new additions — professor of the practice Timothy Dunne; assistant professors Kirsten Cornelson, Illenin Kondo, Benjamin Pugsley, and Jasmine Xiao; and research assistant professor Sarah Kroeger — join a department undergoing remarkable growth. It has added 22 faculty members in the last five years, thanks in part to its selection as one of 10 essential research areas through the University’s Advancing Our Vision program.

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